Detour: Field of Dreams

I learn that we’re near the Field of Dreams movie site in a tractor store. On our drive from Prairie Du Chien, Wisc., to Dubuque, Iowa, my son spots a row of John Deeres from the road and begs me to stop. We play around on the tractors and end up inside the shop for a potty break. That’s where we see a few miniature toy tractors sitting on a shelf, and one of them is emblazoned with the words “Field of Dreams.”

“Are we near the Field of Dreams?” I ask a salesclerk.

“Oh yeah, only about 20 minutes or so.” He shows me a map and how to get to Dyersville, the closest town to the site of the 1989 Academy Award nominee for “Best Picture of the Year” starring Kevin Costner. “Once you’re in town, you’ll see the sign. Can’t miss it,” he says.

I’m torn on whether to drive an extra 40 miles to see a baseball field, but I feel a nagging urge to seek out the famous site, and I practically hear a voice telling me, “They built it, you must go.”

We drive through lush cornfields–a seemingly endless sea of green. A storm passes over and the sky changes from bright blue to deep purple to dark gray–and then rain dumps, lightning flashes, and it suddenly clears up just as we pull up to the Field of Dreams parking lot.

As a San Francisco girl who is used to sitting in bleak fog all summer long, the volatile weather seems almost magical. I begin to understand how the author of the book, Shoeless Joe, on which the movie is based, might have been inspired by the landscape. The story goes that an Iowa farmer is standing in the middle of a cornfield when he hears a mysterious voice telling him to cut a baseball diamond out of his field so the ghost of Joe Jackson (aka Shoeless Joe), who was a member of the infamous 1919 Black Sox team, can come play some ball.

We get out of the car and join another dozen tourists who are also arriving. Later a bus pulls up. The site gets some 50,000 visitors a year.

I sit in the bleachers while my kids run circles around the perfectly manicured diamond. Other folks, their baseball mitts in hand, toss balls. It’s almost surreal to see this field surrounded by cornfields–especially when another storm starts to sweep through. As the wind picks up and the sky grows dark, I get goose bumps. I hear a muffled voice and turn my head, half expecting to see Kevin Costner sitting next to me. Instead, it’s my son who has run up the bleachers and excitedly says, “Mommy, let’s go play baseball. Come on!”

We don’t have any mitts, balls or bats, but no matter because imaginations can run wild in Iowa cornfields.

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Want to hear from a Field of Dreams tourist? Listen to this sound bite from Jim Salentiny of Longmont, Colo., who visited the field to play a game of catch with his wife on the field.

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